


Lost Cause

by mrs_d



Series: Tumblr Fics [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, M/M, Missing Scene, Steve steals more than just his uniform, the Smithsonian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 18:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5794525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_d/pseuds/mrs_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damn the museum cameras, damn his image as The Good Captain. He’s Steve Rogers, and that’s Bucky Barnes — Bucky, who swiped more than a few things they needed when times got tough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Cause

**Author's Note:**

> See the inspiration for this fic and/or read it on [my Tumblr](http://mrsdawnaway.tumblr.com/post/137880612044/okay-but-seriously-there-is-no-way-that-the).

He wasn’t planning on doing it, but he goes back to the Smithsonian for his uniform, and there’s Bucky’s face, not the way he’d seen it on the bridge, not covered by a mask or pinched in pain and confusion. All at once, it hits Steve harder than ever what he’s up against, and, damn the museum cameras, damn his image as The Good Captain. He’s Steve Rogers, and that’s Bucky Barnes — Bucky, who swiped more than a few things they needed when times got tough because he knew Steve never would, and he thought Steve never had to know. (Steve did, of course; he just didn’t ask. It was easier to just be grateful when Bucky suddenly had money to get him medicine for his lungs, even though the docks didn’t pay  _that_  well.) 

So Steve scans the display cases until he finds it. It's tucked under the edge of a pistol holster, its tarnished chain crumpled and knotted. The Smithsonian didn’t know — couldn’t know — the value of this little metal oval. It must have been in Bucky’s pack, or maybe he’d left at the base the morning they went to catch Zola’s train. Regardless, it’s obvious that the details got lost; if the curators had known whom it belonged to, they likely wouldn’t have put it here with the other miscellaneous items grouped under the heading of the Howling Commandos. Instead, the medal would be where it belonged, in the case that housed Bucky’s rifle and letters from home, since it was a piece of home that he carried with him always.

“St. Jude,” Steve’s mother had told him, pressing it into his palm after Bucky dragged Steve away from one too many schoolyard scuffles. “Patron saint of lost causes.”

“Don’t you think Steve should have this, Mrs. Rogers?” Bucky joked.

“Already do, Buck,” said Steve, pulling the chain from his pocket. “Guess we match now.”

“Once a lost cause, always a lost cause,” his mother agreed with a fond sigh.

But Steve doesn’t have his anymore. He stood on a train track and threw it over the side of a mountain in 1944. Because if Bucky’s was at the bottom of an icy river, Steve’s belonged there, too.

To say that seeing it in a museum one day seventy years later had been a shock would be the biggest understatement of Steve’s overlong life. That day, he’d destroyed a few punching bags in the SHIELD training room and ignored Natasha’s suggestions (prompted by Fury no doubt) to call one of the therapists they’d forced him to go to after he woke up in the 21st century.

Steve’s grateful it’s here now, though, that whoever put it here didn’t know its value, since it’s not well-guarded and all too easy to pocket. As he jimmies the case open, his mind is already running scenarios, planning tactics. He sketches out the hand-to-hand — non-lethal, of course. He can dislocate the right shoulder if Bucky doesn’t let up, choke him out if he has to, but he hopes it doesn’t come to that, and he lets his imagination fuel that tiny spark of hope that has refused to die, despite Sam’s wise advice, despite the odds that Steve is facing. He imagines talking, since Bucky was always a talker. If he can convince Bucky not to fight, he can remind him who is, he can see Bucky’s face light up when he hands him the medallion. He wonders if Bucky will remember his mother giving it to him, but it’s an idle curiosity; as long as Bucky remembers Steve, that’s what really matters.

There was a moment, on the street, when Steve was sure that Bucky was close to remembering, to seeing Steve in front of him as something other than a target. But then it was like a switch went off, and Bucky was shooting at him again, and Natasha and Sam were trying to bring him down. This time, that won’t happen, and Steve’s certain that his best weapons are the uniform that Bucky helped him design and the medal that matched Steve’s.

* * *

After Steve wakes up in the hospital, he gets Sam to check the pockets of his uniform — several times — but the medal’s gone. He finally asks if anybody found anything on the side of the river, but Sam shakes his head. 

“Other than you? No. Why? What did you lose?”

Steve can’t tell him. Maybe he will someday, but today, he’s caught up in how stupid the whole notion seems in retrospect — to think that he could have given Bucky a medallion and healed him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve replies finally. “It’s probably at the bottom of the Potomac.”

“Just be glad you’re not,” Sam says insistently, quietly.

Steve doesn’t need to tell him that he was ready to go down with the helicarrier; that’s Sam. From day one, he could look at Steve and see right through him. 

“Which leads me to my next piece of news,” Sam goes on a moment later, sounding wary. “You didn’t swim to shore.”

This isn’t exactly news to Steve — he knows he was in no physical condition to save himself from the wreckage, even if he’d wanted to — but he nods, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Footprints in the mud show that somebody fished you out. We can’t say for sure who, and nobody’s come forward to take credit or anything, but—”

“Bucky,” Steve says softly, and that tiny spark of hope ignites in his chest. Maybe it doesn’t matter that he couldn't give the medal to Bucky; maybe his words were enough, after all.

"We don’t know that,” Sam protests realistically. “Could have just been a Good Samaritan,” he adds, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

“It was Bucky,” Steve says again.

Sam sighs. “Yeah. Figured you’d say that. Let’s hope you’re right.”

“I am.”

Sam shakes his head, but he’s smiling. He’s with Steve on this, which means more than Steve can say right now, so he just smiles back, despite the painful pull of the wounds that are almost but not quite healed.

Once a lost cause, always a lost cause, he thinks. Maybe Bucky’s medallion belongs at the bottom of a river. It’s where Steve’s is, after all. 


End file.
